Renton decides to quit heroin and buys opiumrectal suppositories from Mikey Forrester to ease the transition. After this final hit (and a violent spell of diarrhea caused by cessation of heroin) he locks himself into a cheap hotel room to endure withdrawal. He later goes with his friends to a club, finding that his sex drive has returned, and eventually leaves with a young woman named Diane. In the morning, he realises that Diane is a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl and that her "flatmates" are actually her parents. Horrified, Renton tries to shake the incident, but is forced to remain in touch after Diane blackmails him.

Sick Boy, Spud and Renton start using heroin again. Tommy, whose girlfriend dumped him after a chain of events initiated by Renton, begins using as well. One day the group's heroin-induced stupor is violently interrupted when Allison, their friend and fellow addict, discovers that her infant daughter Dawn has died from neglect without any of the group noticing. All are horrified, especially Sick Boy, who is implied to have secretly been Dawn's father.

Renton and Spud are caught stealing from a bookshop and arrested. Spud goes to prison, but Renton avoids punishment by entering a Drug Interventions Programme, where he is given methadone. Despite support from his family, Renton is depressed and bored, and escapes to his drug dealer's flat, where he nearly dies of an overdose. Renton's parents take him home and lock him in his old bedroom to force him through withdrawal. As Renton goes through severe withdrawal symptoms, he has nightmares of Diane singing on the bed, his friends giving him advice, Allison's dead baby crawling on the ceiling, and an imagined TV game show in which host Dale Winton asks Renton's parents questions about HIV.

Renton is finally roused from his nightmares and hallucinations by his parents, who tell him he needs to get tested. Despite years of sharing syringes with other addicts, Renton tests negative. Bored and depressed, he visits Tommy, who has succumbed to addiction and is now severely ill and HIV-positive. Renton moves to London and takes a job as a property letting agent. He begins to enjoy his new life of sobriety and saves up money on the side while corresponding with Diane. However, Begbie, who has committed an armed robbery, and Sick Boy, now a pimp and drug dealer, move into Renton's bedsit unannounced, to Renton's irritation.

In Edinburgh, Tommy dies from HIV-related toxoplasmosis and the three travel back to Scotland for his funeral. They meet Spud, who has been released from prison. Sick Boy suggests a lucrative but dangerous heroin transaction, but needs Renton to supply half of the initial £4,000. Renton injects himself with a sample to test the heroin's purity. The four sell the heroin to a dealer for £16,000. During their celebration at a pub, Renton secretly suggests to Spud that they steal the money, but Spud is too frightened of Begbie to consider it. Renton finally has enough of Begbie after witnessing him glass and then beat a man who accidentally spilt beer over him. Early in the morning as the others sleep, Renton quietly takes the money. Spud sees him leave but does not tell the others. When Begbie awakens, he destroys the hotel room in a violent rampage which attracts the police while Spud and Sick Boy flee. Renton vows to live a stable, traditional life, and leaves Spud £2,000.

The last scene of the film shows Spud discovering the £2,000 that Renton left him, and he smiles.

Production[edit]

Producer Andrew Macdonald read Irvine Welsh's book on a plane in December 1993 and felt that it could be made into a film.[5] He turned it on to director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge in February 1994.[6][7] Boyle was excited by its potential to be the "most energetic film you've ever seen – about something that ultimately ends up in purgatory or worse".[6] Hodge read it and made it his goal to "produce a screenplay which would seem to have a beginning, a middle and an end, would last 90 minutes and would convey at least some of the spirit and the content of the book".[7] Boyle convinced Welsh to let them option the rights to his book by writing him a letter stating that Hodge and Macdonald were "the two most important Scotsmen since Kenny Dalglish and Alex Ferguson".[5] Welsh remembered that originally the people wanting to option his book "wanted to make a po-faced piece of social realism like Christiane F or The Basketball Diaries".[5] He was impressed that Boyle, Hodge and Macdonald wanted everyone to see the film and "not just the arthouse audience".[5] In October 1994, Hodge, Boyle and Macdonald spent a lot of time discussing which chapters of the book would and would not translate into film. Hodge finished the first draft by December.[5] Macdonald secured financing from Channel 4, a British television station known for funding independent films.[6]

Casting[edit]

Pre-production began in April 1995 with Ewan McGregor cast in advance after impressing Boyle and Macdonald with his work on their previous film, Shallow Grave.[5] According to Boyle, for the role of Renton, they wanted somebody who had the quality "Michael Caine's got in Alfie and Malcolm McDowell's got in A Clockwork Orange" – a repulsive character with charm "that makes you feel deeply ambiguous about what he's doing".[6] McGregor shaved his head and lost 2 stone (almost 30 pounds) for the film.[6]Ewen Bremner had played Renton in the stage adaptation of Trainspotting and agreed to play the role of Spud. He said, "I felt that these characters were part of my heritage".[5] Boyle had heard about Jonny Lee Miller playing an American in the film Hackers and was impressed when he auditioned by doing a Sean Connery accent.[8] For the role of Begbie, Boyle thought about casting Christopher Eccleston because he resembled how the director imagined the character in the book, but decided to go a different route and asked Robert Carlyle instead. Carlyle said, "I've met loads of Begbies in my time. Wander round Glasgow on Saturday night and you've a good chance of running into Begbie".[8] For the role of Diane, Boyle wanted an actress with no previous experience "so no-one would twig that a 19-year-old was playing the part" of a 14-year-old.[8] The filmmakers sent flyers to nightclubs and boutiques and even approached people on the street, eventually hiring Kelly Macdonald.[8]

Pre-production[edit]

McGregor read books about crack and heroin to prepare for the role. He also went to Glasgow and met people from the Calton Athletic Recovery Group, an organisation of recovering heroin addicts. He was taught how to cook up heroin with a spoon using glucose powder.[9] McGregor considered injecting heroin to better understand the character, but eventually decided against it.[8]

Many of the book's stories and characters were dropped to create a cohesive script of adequate length. Danny Boyle had his actors prepare by making them watch older movies about rebellious youths like The Hustler, and A Clockwork Orange.[citation needed] and films with stylised cinematic such as 2001 A Space Odyssey and The Exorcist

Principal photography[edit]

Trainspotting was shot in mid-1995 over seven weeks on a budget of $2.5 million with the cast and crew working out of an abandoned cigarette factory in Glasgow. Due to a lack of budget and time constraints, most scenes were done in one take, which contributed to the grungy look of the film. For example, when Renton sinks into the floor after overdosing on heroin, the crew built a platform above a trap door and lowered the actor down.[6] The scene where Renton (McGregor) dives in a toilet is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow. The faeces in the 'Worst Toilet in Scotland' scene were made from chocolate. For the look of the film, Boyle was influenced by the colours of Francis Bacon's paintings, which represented "a sort of in-between land – part reality, part fantasy".[8]

Upon its initial release in the United States, the first 20 minutes of Trainspotting were re-edited with alternative dialogue to allow the American audience to comprehend the strong Scottish accents and slang. In addition, to ensure that the film received an R rating, Boyle trimmed two scenes: a graphic display of a syringe filled with heroin being inserted into a vein and Kelly Macdonald straddling McGregor during an orgasm.[6] The original dialogue was later restored on the Criterion Collectionlaserdisc in 1997 and then on the re-release of the "Director's Cut (The Collector's Edition)" DVD in 2004.

Filming locations[edit]

Despite being set in Edinburgh, almost all of the film was shot in Glasgow, apart from the opening scenes, which were shot in Edinburgh, and the final scenes which were shot in London.[10]

Notable locations in the film include:

The opening scene showing Renton and Spud being chased by store detectives was filmed on Princes Street, Edinburgh.[10] A scene showing the theft did not make the final cut and was filmed in the music department of the since-closed John Menzies, also on Princes Street, the store still exists but is now owned by the retail giant Next.

The scene where the chase ends is on Calton Road, Edinburgh, near the rear entrance of Waverley Station.

The flat that Renton shows the young couple around when he gets the job as an estate agent and ultimately stashes Begbie and Sick Boy in is 78A Talgarth Road in West Kensington, London, opposite West Kensington tube station.

The scenes where they do their drug deal takes place in Bayswater. The scene where they parody the cover of The Beatles album Abbey Road takes place as they walk out of Smallbrook Mews across Craven Road to the Royal Eagle, 26–30 Craven Road, Bayswater.[10]

Soundtracks[edit]

The Trainspotting soundtracks were two best-selling albums of music centred around the film. The first is a collection of songs featured in the film, while the second includes those left out from the first soundtrack and extra songs that inspired the filmmakers during production.

Reaction[edit]

Trainspotting was screened at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival but was shown out of competition,[11] according to the filmmakers, due to its subject.[12] It went on to become the festival's one unqualified critical and popular hit.[13] The film made £12 million in the domestic market and $72 million internationally.[14] By the time it opened in North America, on 19 July 1996, the film had made more than $18 million in Britain. It initially opened in eight theatres and on its first weekend grossed $33,000 per screen.[6] The film finally made $16.4 million in North America.[15]Trainspotting was the highest-grossing British film of 1996, and at the time it was the fourth highest grossing British film in history.[16]

Critical reception[edit]

In Britain, Trainspotting garnered almost universal praise from critics. In his review for The Guardian, Derek Malcolm gave the film credit for tapping into the youth subculture of the time and felt that it was "acted out with a freedom of expression that's often astonishing."[17]Empire magazine gave the film five out of five stars and described the film as "something Britain can be proud of and Hollywood must be afraid of. If we Brits can make movies this good about subjects this horrific, what chance does Tinseltown have?"[18]

American film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised its portrayal of addicts' experiences with each other.[19] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, "in McGregor ... the film has an actor whose magnetism monopolizes our attention no matter what".[20]Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Like Scorsese and Tarantino, Boyle uses pop songs as rhapsodic mood enhancers, though in his own ravey-hypnotic style. Whether he's staging a fumbly sex montage to Sleeper's version of Atomic or having Renton go cold turkey to the ominous slow build of Underworld's Dark and Long ... Trainspotting keeps us wired to the pulse of its characters' passions".[21] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Trainspotting doesn't have much narrative holding it together. Nor does it really have the dramatic range to cope with such wild extremes. Most of it sticks to the same moderate pitch, with entertainment value enhanced by Mr. Boyle's savvy use of wide angles, bright colours, attractively clean compositions and a dynamic pop score".[22]

Rolling Stone '​s Peter Travers wrote, "the film's flash can't disguise the emptiness of these blasted lives. Trainspotting is 90 minutes of raw power that Boyle and a bang-on cast inject right into the vein".[23] In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "Without a doubt, this is the most provocative, enjoyable pop-cultural experience since Pulp Fiction".[24]Jonathan Rosenbaum, in his review for the Chicago Reader, wrote, "Like Twister and Independence Day, this movie is a theme-park ride – though it's a much better one, basically a series of youthful thrills, spills, chills, and swerves rather than a story intended to say very much".[25]Trainspotting has an 89% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 83 metascore on Metacritic.

Its release sparked some controversy in some countries, including Britain, Australia and the United States, as to whether it promoted drug use or not. US SenatorBob Dole accused it of moral depravity and glorifying drug use during the 1996 US presidential campaign, although he later admitted that he had not seen the film.[26] Despite the controversy, it was widely praised and received a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in that year's Academy Awards. Time magazine ranked Trainspotting as the third best film of 1996.[27]

Legacy[edit]

The film had an immediate impact on popular culture. In 1999, Trainspotting was ranked in the 10th spot by the British Film Institute (BFI) in its list of Top 100 British films of all time,[28] while in 2004 the magazine Total Film named it the fourth greatest British film of all time. The Observer polled several filmmakers and film critics who voted it the best British film in the last 25 years.[29] In 2004, the film was voted the best Scottish film of all time by the public in a poll for The List magazine.[30]Trainspotting has since developed a cult following.[31] It has also been recognised as an important piece of culture and film during the 1990s British cultural tour de force known as Cool Britannia. It was featured in the documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop as well.

The cryptic film title is a reference to a scene (not included in the film) in the original book, where Begbie and Renton meet 'an auld drunkard' who turns out to be Begbie's estranged father, in the disused Leith Central railway station, which they are using as a toilet. He asks them if they are "trainspottin'."[32]

Irvine Welsh himself has explained in a Q&A that the title is also a reference to people thinking that the hobby of trainspotting makes no sense to non-participants. Likewise, the same applies to heroin addiction: to non-addicts the act seems completely pointless whereas, to someone hooked on heroin, it makes absolute sense.

Sequel[edit]

Boyle has declared his wish to make a sequel to Trainspotting which would take place nine years after the original film, based on Irvine Welsh's sequel, Porno. He was reportedly waiting until the original actors themselves aged visibly enough to portray the same characters, ravaged by time; Boyle joked that the natural vanity of actors would make it a long wait. Ewan McGregor stated in an interview that he would return for a sequel, saying "I'm totally up for it. I'd be so chuffed to be back on set with everybody and I think it would be an extraordinary experience.".[34]

In 2013, Boyle said he wants to make a sequel that would be loosely based on Porno which he has described as “not a great book in the way that Trainspotting, the original novel, is genuinely a masterpiece”. Boyle says that if the sequel happens 2016 would be the release.[35]

In July 2013 at the San Diego Comic-Con, Carlyle confirmed that the sequel will happen.

In an interview for Detail magazine, McGregor said the following regarding the sequel: "It looks like it might happen. The idea is that we shoot it in 2016, which would be 20 years after the original came out."